Cuban Ysrael Seinuk, 78 - Made Tall, Sleek Buildings Possible - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes

NYTimes.com/ By DENNIS HEVESI

Ysrael Seinuk, a structural engineer who made it possible for many of New York City’s tallest new buildings to withstand wind, gravity and even earthquakes, died on Sept. 14 in Manhattan. He was 78 and lived in Forest Hills, Queens.

Ysrael Seinuk worked on support systems for a number of New York's towers.

The cause was cancer, said his daughter, Beatrice Seinuk-Ackerman.

New Yorkers may not know his name, but they certainly recognize Mr. Seinuk’s work and its mark on the skyline. Among the many projects that he made structurally possible, usually working with his partner, Irwin G. Cantor, were the 70-story Trump World Tower near the United Nations, the 48-story Condé Nast Building in Times Square and the 45-story Bear Stearns headquarters on Madison Avenue, at 46th Street.

It is structural engineers who allow the architect to sleep peacefully at night. They must analyze the forces, like seismic events, that can affect buildings, with their calculations becoming more complex as buildings are designed to be taller and sleeker. They must determine the strength and flexibility of the construction materials, including the floor slabs, the beams and the columns.

Mr. Seinuk’s “real genius was the design of high-rise buildings using reinforced concrete as the structural material,” Elizabeth O’Donnell, associate dean of architecture at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, said Tuesday. (Reinforced concrete incorporates metal bars — rebars — grids, plates or fibers to strengthen the structure.)

“I think of him as the person who brought reinforced concrete to New York City,” Dean O’Donnell said, “because this was primarily a city where its high-rises were structured in steel.”

The Cantor Seinuk firm designed the support systems for three of New York’s tallest reinforced-concrete buildings: the 57-story Galleria on 57th Street near Park Avenue, the 51-story New York Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue at 50th Street (formerly the Helmsley Palace Hotel) and the 58-story Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.

Similarly designed projects in other countries include the O-14 office tower in Dubai, done for his firm Ysrael A. Seinuk P.C., and the Chapultepec Tower, an office building in the most severe seismic zone of Mexico City.

Among the more unusual New York City structures that Mr. Seinuk helped plan are 450 Lexington Avenue, which rises through an old post office from a base in the subsurface rail yards of Grand Central Terminal; a residential building topped by a pyramid overlooking the United Nations; and the Lipstick Building, an elliptically shaped office tower on Third Avenue at 53rd Street.

For the O-14 building in Dubai, a 22-story commercial building, Mr. Seinuk worked with the architects in the design of an undulating outer shell composed of reinforced concrete, creating an open, column-free interior. The shell is laced with large perforations, allowing it to serve as a solar screen to the extreme desert heat.

Ysrael Abraham Seinuk was born in Havana on Dec. 21, 1931, the only child of Jaime and Sara Seinuk. His father had emigrated from Lithuania. Besides his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Fanny; his son, Isaac; six grandchildren; and one great-grandson.

Mr. Seinuk graduated from the University of Havana with a degree in civil engineering in 1954. Within six years he had designed a 700-room hotel in Havana. But when Fidel Castro came to power, he fled to the United States.

He was soon hired by what was then called Abrams, Hertzberg & Cantor. Ten years later he was promoted to partner and in 1992 was named chief executive of what became the Cantor Seinuk Group.

Mr. Seinuk started what his daughter called a parallel firm, Ysrael A. Seinuk P.C., in 1977, and eventually sold Cantor Seinuk to a British conglomerate.

For 40 years, Mr. Seinuk taught structural engineering to architecture students at Cooper Union.

“He had a huge impact on the students,” Dean O’Donnell said. “He created the structure curriculum so that young architects could bring poetry and power into their designs.”